i was pleasantly surprised to find that you could still install a gnome classic-like option in ubuntu 11.10. i stumbled upon it actually while i was trying to install the normal gnome3 non-unity environment.

i did give unity a try for about 20 minutes. i don’t outright hate it, if i could move the positioning of the launcher bar, make the icons smaller, and disable animations i would use it all the time. however, browsing thru the gigantic icons of non-launcher bar applications is ridiculous. i realize the idea is that you’re supposed to search for your apps, but hey i don’t want to. i want to use mouse-clicks to launch apps unless i’m at a CLI. and i still think kde4 is a pretty slick and fast environment, but i still can’t get used to widgets-only based desktop.

first impressions-wise of 11.10, i don’t have much to say either good or bad. just seems like a solid release so far.

this post has information on setting up gnome classic on 11.10:
http://www.upubuntu.com/2011/10/how-to-use-gnome-classic-on-ubuntu-1110.html